The Flight Of Birds Poem by Paul Hansford

See the buzzard soar, the swallow skim a lake, the kestrel hover;
observe the skylark pouring his little heart out in the sky;
admire the flapwing, lapwing flight of a flock of plover;
what birds do is fly.

At least they oughter,
because once birds get onto the water
they can't help looking absurd
- except the swan, for which nobody I know has an unkind word,
or, mostly, seagulls,
who fly with almost the grace of eagulls,
and in their silvery uniforms are impeccably neat,
even if my admiration for their manners is incomplete -
but, shucks,
look at ducks.

And for something really silly,
shaggy-winged, fluffy-headed, and disproportionately neck-and-bill-y,
consider the pelican, for heaven's sake.
Surely Nature made a mistake,
or left the designing of it to a particularly inept committee,
it's so unpretty.
But once in the air he can soar like a buzzard, though maybe lower,
and skim over the waves with more perfect control than a swallow, and slower,
and dive for a fish like a living javelin, that clumsy pelican.
By helican!

No, for a shapeless, hapless caricature, created to be comical,
the epitome of what a bird shouldn't be, the penguin must be the most epitomical.
As he does his impression of a Charlie Chaplin waiter,
you know he'll fall off the ice sooner or later.
But before a warning can escape your lips
he trips
(and slips) .
Then, as he slides beneath the waves, ah! see the happy penguin fly,
a graceful bird in his bluegreen underwater sky.

*******

(The last section owes most of its images to a class of 8-year-olds I once taught.)